A loose collection of things I’ve been reading. No theme, just things that held my attention.
Books
The Timeless Way of Building — Christopher Alexander. Dense and slow and worth it. The idea that quality in buildings (and software, and writing) comes from something you can feel but struggle to name.
Shop Class as Soulcraft — Matthew Crawford. A philosopher becomes a motorcycle mechanic. The argument is for the value of work that resists abstraction.
Articles
“The Burnout Machine” — I keep coming back to the question of what we’re optimizing for when we optimize productivity.
“Against Recommendations” — Someone’s argument that curation has replaced discovery, and we’re worse off for it.
On the internet
The Marginalia search engine keeps surfacing things I’d never find otherwise. Small sites, old pages, things written without any expectation of being read by many people. That’s the good stuff.
What I’m reading next
Thinking about revisiting Wendell Berry. What Are People For? feels relevant in ways I can’t quite articulate yet.